In regards to the scenting of pinkies using fish scents, the wrong question keeps getting asked over and over "Why do hognose like fish when it's not part of their natural diet?", or in the case of one individual that basically repeats the same obvious statement over and over "Salmon and tuna, are not natural prey items for hognose. Therefore, it cannot be something considered, "normal" to the animal." and "Whats odd is, tuna or salmon do not have anything to do with what is natural to hognose snakes.". Yeah, I think we already knew that much.



The biggest key to being a good researcher is to know how to determine the right questions from the wrong questions. For this discussion, this leads us to ask how hognose differentiate palatable food items, in this case a fish scented pinky over a non-scented pinky. Well, the key word here "scented", but we'll get to that shortly. Hognose obviously don't determine palatable food items from sight although that does help to trigger a feeding response when a prey item does move but sight alone is not going to determine what is edible or not, it's just going to determine something that might be worth attacking to determine later if it's edible or not. So sight is probably not the right sense we are looking for. Does a hognose use touch as a means of determining a palatable prey item over another? Perhaps, but in the case of scented vs unscented pinkies, the answer is no as both pinkies should feel identical to each other but one is going to be more palatable than the other regardless of how it feels. How about taste? Well, that would seem like a reasonable question to ask and most animals will often times taste things to determine whether it's edible or not and either continue to eat it or spit it out based on taste. But in this case, hognose don't normally taste something to determine whether they want to eat something or not, once they bite into something, they usually have a good intention of eating it. I've never seen a hognose take a bite into an unscented pinky and then spit it out only to take a bite out of a scented pinky and eat it, that's never been witnessed by me. However, I have witnessed many times of hognose accidently biting themselves out of excitement and then quickly releasing, so taste might have something to do with that part of eating rejection, but I've never witnessed it with actual food items. So that only leaves us with smell, snakes smell with their tongues using the Jacobson's organ which determines chemical compositions from scents. Most snakes will often flick their tongues around prey items to determine whether it's a food item or not which, when determined as a prey item, often triggers a bite response which is typically followed by an eating response. So we have determined that hognose snakes are determining prey items, in this case, fish scented pinkies, by smell.



So, I believe that the right question is to ask "What is it in fish odors that triggers a feeding response?" instead of the wrong question "Why do hognose like fish?". Obviously, hognose don't "like" fish per se as, has been pointed out many times, fish are not part of their natural diet and I doubt they can determine a fish from a frog based on appearances alone. But it's highly possible that there is a chemical scent in fish that either is identical or similiar to some of the natural scents found in prey items of hognose and other snakes that do in fact trigger a feeding response.



The key now is to try and determine just what that chemical is that can be found in both fish and other natural prey items. I first looked up information on fish odors and so far have come up with two chemicals that can also be found in amphibians, Trimethylamine (Google reference)and Choline (Google reference).



Now, whether or not either of these two chemicals are in fact the cause of triggering a feeding response from hognose using fish as a scent is uncertain and is pure conjecture on my behalf, but I do believe that it is research pointed in the right direction and worth further investigation.
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Troy Rexroth

Rextiles

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